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Veteran prop Jannie du Plessis, who is a qualified medical doctor, believes nothing will be the same again after the global coronavirus health crisis.

The world is in the grip of the novel coronavirus, which has forced several countries, including South Africa, to go into lockdown.

Du Plessis returned to South Africa late last year after joining the Lions for the 2020 Vodacom Super Rugby season. But in an interview with Netwerk24, Du Plessis confirmed he and family have indefinitely traded Johannesburg for their farm in the Bethlehem district of the Free State amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

‘Me and my wife decided it would be better for us to come to the farm. Here is more space for everyone and from a health and exposure-to-people point of view it’s also better,’ Du Plessis said.

‘I did some research on the coronavirus and for me it has about the same effect as the 1918 flu pandemic, the human immune system was not strong enough for that virus and it led to a large number of deaths.

‘What gave me a fright of this current virus was how quickly it spread. We were still on tour in Australia just a few weeks ago, but it makes you sit up and take note how it spread worldwide in a short period,’ Du Plessis explained.

‘The manner in which the president [Cyril Ramaphosa] acted, and the measures put in place, is the right way to go about things, even though there are people who are skeptical about the lockdown of the country.’

Du Plessis said it was tough to train without his teammates and hoped for a solution ‘so we can get as close as possible to what we experienced as normality’.